Love Affair
I started reading a new book the other night and realized just how much I hate when people say this, “It took about 200 pages but after that it got really good.” My goodness! I just don’t have the time or patience these days to read 200 crappy pages to get to the good part. The new book I was reading is called The Accidental and the premise sounded wonderful….a stranger literally invites herself into a family’s vacation home, everyone thinking that each other knows her and she changes their lives maybe not for the better…..but it’s written with a stream of conciousness James Joyce style that almost killed me in high school…….oh, Cow get down the road for God’s sakes.
I am not a fiction writer but really, should a reader have to suffer through a slow, laborious or incoherent beginning, feeling like they are paying their dues in order to actually enjoy the pages they are turning? A book has got to get me from the start these days. Maybe The Accidental does get easier to read but it is such a chore right now, it’s getting returned to library at page 50.
I was at a Children’s Writers and Illustrator’s conference a few years ago and Richard Peck spoke to us. He was absolutely endearing, made you want to pack him up and take him home with you….the novel he was working at the time on started like this, “If your teacher has to die, August isn’t a bad time of year for it….” He talked about engaging readers from the get go. I’d get on board with an opener like that. I need to read it in fact. Oh, I just love a book that feels like an affair…you think about it all the time, you steal moments to read it, you think you actually see the characters everywhere…..I started A Thousand Splendid Suns and it has that ability….we’ll see.
Stolen Moments and Letting Go
It’s a fall afternoon and Bob’s picked the kids up from Grandma’s and they are not back yet. I got home first, a first. House is empty and I am drawing in my studio. Wow, these stolen moments. I can just see the commercial now…treasure your stolen moments…..a mother or father with cup of coffee in hand, house a tossed mess, but who cares, it’s quiet and you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself.
I had a good week….I kept my cool. I’m learning to ignore. This sounds like non-parenting and it sort of is…the laissez faire type. But I’ve found that jumping at every little thing is simply fueling the fire. Duh. My boys are learning to work things out themselves, well, kind of. But it’s a step in the right direction. Maybe these postcard prayers are working, maybe I’m achieving a better balance….maybe it’s the biggeset damn learning curve I’ve ever encountered.
Out with the letter C
My sister, Susan and I were talking the other night about the difficulties she’s having teaching a few of her kindergarten kids to read. Imagine teaching a 5 year old that the word CIRCUS for example is not spelled SIRKUS but with the very sneaky letter “C”. Then we got to thinking…do we really need “C”? S and K already make all if the sounds C steals from them. Come on people! C, what’s it good for? Let’s make it easier for our little ones, down with “C”!
Sorry, Claire, I mean, Klaire. And really, let’s talk about the silent “E” on the end of your name.
I’ve been whining quite a bit….
Fickle, I love that word. Unfortunately, it describes me to a tee these days. I’m about to head down a road that I know is going to be tough and I am kicking and screaming and throwing off my tights, looking for exits, escape routes……ahhhh…what have I done, she smiles. I am thrilled to have a daughter and am secretly hoping she is like all of those docile, sweet little things in striped pink, brown and lime green butterfly tunics.
One day after both big brothers crying, tantruming and fighting, Jamie says to me, “Boy, I sure hope our baby girl acts better than us.” Really, he said it not me.
This week I decided that I was going to make my own prayers…in the the form of art. Prayer postcards. They might be good, they might just plain stink but I am doing them anyway. It’s my way of relaxing. I can get a 4×6 done. I’m posting some on this blog. Many of them are done with patterns that my grandmother used to make doll clothes for my mom and aunt…some have pages from a Twentieth Century Typewriting: the Complete Course (they sayings are amazingly dated and so cheesily positive), all kinds of stuff. Just fun, just simple, just doing something and just not whining.
